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ADDRESS 



OCCASION OF PRESENTING TO JOHN ERICSSON 
THE RUMFORD MEDAL OF THE 
AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



Nf HORSF 



E^'^Nf HORSFORD, 



LATE RU:MFORr) PROFESSOR IN HARVARD rjflVERSITy. 




NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON, 

459 Broome Street. 

1866. 



ADDRESS 



OCCASION OF PRESBNTma TO JOHN ERICSSON 
THE RUMFORD MEDAL OF THE^ 
AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



r. 



/' 



E) N" HORSFORD, 

LATE RUMFOKD PROFESSOR IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 




NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON, 

459 Become Street. 

1866. 



-T^^ 
t?^^ 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
PRINTED BT H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



ADDRESS, 



We have met to place in the hands of Captain Ericsson 
the Rumford Prize, awarded to him by the American Acad- 
emy of Arts and Sciences, in 1862. It seems appropriate to 
the occasion, so long delayed by the events of the war, to call 
to mind the claims which the Academy has thus recognized. 
They rest upon the just appreciation of the purpose of Count 
Rumford in founding the Premium. What that was we 
gather from his letter of bequest, his letter of explanation to 
Sir Joseph Banks, and his pursuits. A great part of his life 
was passed in experimental researches in the application of 
the sciences to the useful arts. He studied to economize 
fuel, and to improve the arts of illumination, ventilation, 
and cooking. While in Bavaria he sought to lessen the 
discomforts of the poor, as well by improved mechanical 
contrivances for domestic uses, as by fully thought out and 
practically effective systems of relief. His more purely scien- 
tific labors were most of them in the same field. He pre- 
ceded by half a century the German Mayer in the revival 
of the hypothesis of Bacon, that " heat is motion." This 
was the happy interpretation of the experiment conducted by 
Count Rumford of boring a cannon in a trunk filled up with 
water, in which the vibration imparted to the metal ultimately 
brought the water to the boiling-point. His scientific me- 
moirs will be a lasting monument to his fame ; but the Pre- 
mium he established has provided, in an especial manner, for 
the perpetuation of his name, by forever associating with it a 
large class of the most useful inventions among men. In the 



4 ADDRESS. 

year 1796 he founded, in the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, and also in the Royal Society of England, a prize to 
be awarded for " improvements or discoveries in light or 
heat." The scope of the Premium w^as specially defined in 
a letter addressed the year following to Sir Joseph Banks, 
President of the Royal Society, in which he says : " The ob- 
jects more particularly had in view to encourage, are such 
practical improvements in the generation and management 
of heat and light as tend directly and powerfully to increase 
the enjoyments and comforts of life, especially in the lower 
and more numerous classes of society." 

The first Rumford Medal, in this country, was awarded to 
Robert Hare, for his invention of the Oxyhydrogen Blow- 
pipe. 

The second Medal was awarded to John Ericsson, '■'■for 
his improvements in the management of heat, particularly as 
shown in his caloric engine of 1858." 

CLAIMS OF ERICSSON. 

To enable us to appreciate the full claim to this award, 
it would be necessary to review much of Captain Ericsson's 
career of invention for the last forty years and more, as it 
has been distinguished chiefly for the improvements it pre- 
sents in the " generation and management of heat." Time 
will not permit this. I must pass, with a mere allusion, the 
steam fire-engine made in England, and used on the fires 
of the Argyle Rooms, the English Opera House, and Bar- 
clay's brewery, and that made for the King of Prussia, and 
put in operation in Berlin before the idea had been suggested 
in this country ; and the locomotive Novelty, which attained 
a speed of fifty miles an hour in the great competition on the 
Liverpool and Manchester Railway, at the dawn of the new 
mode of travel in 1829. I must pass, too, the improvements 
in distillation and the procu?'ing of fresh from salt water at 
sea, together with numerous inventions relating to boilers 
and steam-engines. It would be interesting to dwell on these 
in connection with the great issues to which they have con- 



ADDRESS. 5 

tributed, as it would on others not connected with heat, but 
still of great interest, such as the water meter, the sounding 
apparatus, the balanced rudder, and the device — recently- 
revived — of conducting railway-trains up steep grades, by 
directing the power of the locomotive through lateral press- 
ure applied on both sides of a central rail; but I must 
limit myself to the consideration of the principal inventions 
connected with improvements in the naval and commercial 
marine and the caloric engine. 

That these belong to the class of " such as tend directly 
and powerfully to increase the enjoyments and comforts of 
life, especially in the lower and more numerous classes of 
society," will be obvious when we consider their connection 
with the development of industry and commerce and the 
preservation of States. 

IMPEOVEMENTS IN THE NAVAL AND COMMERCIAL MARINE. 

The distinguishing characteristics of the vessels of war of 
the ancients were, their power to take position without regard 
to winds or currents ; their ability to run down an antagonist, 
for which the bow was armed with a metallic beak ; the in- 
vulnerability of the propelling power, — the banks of oars 
working through the sides of the hull; and the sheltered 
condition of the fighting men, who could, nevertheless, from 
towers, direct their missiles to any quarter from which the 
foe might be approaching. 

With the Battle of Actium, nineteen centuries ago, culmi- 
nated the naval architecture of the ancients. Thereafter, no 
marked advance was made in any quarter of the world for a 
thousand years. The first great improvement, like the most 
recent, was the offspring of Scandinavian genius. The sharp 
keel, enabling the vessel to encounter turbulent waters, was 
devised by the fishermen from the eastern shores of the North 
Sea. From the same waters issued the vessels in which 
the adventurous Northmen led the way of discovery to the 
western shores of the Atlantic. The ships of the period were 
small. The army of William the Norman crossed the British 



6 ADDRESS. 

Channel in transports, some of which were inferior in tonnage 
to many of our fishing-smacks, and others but little exceeded 
our whale-boats or the launches of a man-of-war in size, and 
did not equal them in safety. 

With the practical use of gunpowder it had been made 
possible to hurl projectiles to greater distances, and cannon 
were placed on shipboard. The ship-yards of the Adriatic 
sent out a class of vessels capacious and safe, — the armed 
argosies, suited to the wants of commerce. Out of these 
argosies grew the man-of-war, with its tiers of guns, — a 
structure singularly suited to display the pluck of the sailor. 
Though shot might pierce the sides of the vessel and scatter 
splinters among the gunners and crew, the hull more fre- 
quently survived in a naval engagement to become a prize to 
the victors. At the Battle of Trafalgar, though hundreds of 
shot were driven through the wooden walls, not a vessel was 
sunk. The introduction of the horizontal firing of hollow 
shot, to burst on striking, lessened the safety and with it the 
steadfastness of the gunners. Such shot were contemplated 
by the first Napoleon in his armament of the Boulogne fleet 
in 1805. They were constructed at about this time by 
Robert L. Stephens, and specimens are still preserved in the 
navy-yard at Washington. But as an instrument of ofi^ence 
in war it was reserved for the French officer, General Paix- 
hans, to introduce, in 1820, the use of large guns on ship- 
board for the express purpose of throwing hollow shot to be 
exploded by percussion. These shells, penetrating the sides 
of ships and bursting within them, greatly intensified the 
sanguinary character of naval battles, and increased the 
importance of being able to take choice of position. Consid- 
erable actions were of course impossible without wind. The 
fleets could not manoeuvre. Steam had come, it is true, to 
make vessels independent of wind and current. But with it 
came the side-wheels, the smoke-stack, and the boilers on 
deck, which placed the vessel at the mercy of the enemy's 
shot. Steamers proved useful as transports and despatch- 
vessels, but were unable to cope with the old ships of the 



ADDRESS. 7 

line. If the latter could not take choice of position so as to 
bring the broadside guns into service, the pivot-gun at the 
bow or stern, vrith a single happy shot, might pierce a boiler, 
or destroy a wheel, or smoke-stack, or the rudder-chains, and 
at once put an end to the supremacy of the steamer. 

This brief sketch was necessary to enable us fully to com- 
prehend the magnitude of the first great revolution in naval 
architecture since the introduction of steam. 

It proposed to place the boiler, the machinery, and the 
propelling power — all the vital parts of the ship — below 
the water-line, out of the reach of shot and shell. It pro- 
posed the telescopic chimney, that might be elevated or de- 
pressed at pleasure, in connection with a centrifugal blower, 
that made the draught of the fire independent of the height 
of the chimney. 

Without these elements of the modern war-ship, all the 
others, it will be seen, are of comparatively little moment. 

A vessel was constructed expressly to illustrate these great 
improvements. Though built in England, it was called the 
Francis B. Ogden^ — a name familiar as that of our consul 
at Liverpool. This may be regarded as the first successful 
propeller. The screw, boiler, and machinery were below the 
water-line. It performed its duty in all respects well, on an 
excursion to which were invited His Majesty's Lords Com- 
missioners of the Admiralty, and Sir William Symonds, the 
distinguished surveyor of the navy ; and what was the 
result ? Did they welcome such an accession to the naval 
power of England ? Was a new vessel ordered of adequate 
dimensions to fully test the proposed improvements ? Far 
from it. There was never a happier illustration of the ha- 
bitual conservatism of the British Government in the treat- 
ment of new projects, than the course of the Lords of the 
Admiralty on this occasion. After considerable delay, it 
transpired, as the result of the deliberation of the Admiralty 
Board, that it would be impossible to steer a vessel where the 
propelling power was so near the rudder ! 



5 ADDRESS. 

It is not to be wondered at that our guest should soon after 
have sought appreciation in another hemisphere. He came 
to America, bringing with him the machinery of a second 
propeller, the Robert F. Stockton, (still in active operation, in 
1866,) and introducing screw navigation to the New World. 
At a later period he built for the government the screw war- 
steamer Princeton, embodying the improvements illustrated 
in a smaller way in the Robert F. Stockton ; and when her 
plans and performance had elicited the admiration of some 
of the first naval constructors and naval officers of the world, 
then the Lords of the Admiralty commenced altering the 
old ships of the line, and building an indefinite number of 
the new vessels of various sizes, adopting not only the mode 
of propulsion demonstrated in the Princeton, and the plan of 
placing the vital parts of the steamer below the water-line, 
but even the artificial draught and the telescopic chimney. 

Here were taken, at once, two great strides in marine 
architecture, the invulnerable propelling power and the screw. 
Steam was rendered available in naval warfare. These 
improvements restored to ships of war the ability lost sight 
of with the triremes, to take choice of position ; and placed 
the power to go into or come out of an action almost beyond 
the contingencies of shot and shell. 

The inventions of Captain Ericsson bear date of 1837. 
Various other persons had attempted to find a practical solu- 
tion for propulsion by the screw, but it remained to achieve 
the victory over all difficulties and give what the world 
needed, — success. English authorities concede this, as do 
the French, for whose government he furnished the plans 
for the Pomone, the first screw man-of-war in the French 
navy. We do not lose sight, in this sketch, of the steam- 
screw propeller put in operation on Kollec Pond, in the city 
of New York, by John Fitch, in 1796. It was very small, 
it is true, and very little like the propeller of modern times. 
The screw was a shaft with a single, continuous, deep thread, 
and its other appliances were equallj'- crude ; but it was the 
first steam-screw propeller. Its veteran inventor — who, like 



■ ADDRESS. 9 

too many sons of genius, reaped but indifferent reward for 
his labors for the good of mankind — wrote : " This will be 
the mode of crossing the Atlantic in time, whether I shall 
bring it to perfection or not." 

With this revolution in naval architecture, which speedily- 
spread through the British and French fleets, the world 
seems to have been satisfied, and it slumbered on till the 
experience of the Crimean War suggested the protection of 
ships against bursting shells. The vessel was to be coated 
with plates of iron, thick enough to crush the shells thrown 
against them. Soon the idea arose of plating thick enough 
to resist the penetration of solid shot. The Gloire, on the 
part of the French, and the Warrior, on the part of the 
English Government, were the first vessels constructed on 
the new principle. The plate was strong enough to resist 
the penetrating power of the smooth-bore sixty-eight pounder, 
then the best gun in the British naval service. 

The adoption of Professor Treadwell's system of coil-guns, 
as produced by Sir William Armstrong, soon proved to the 
English Government that the Warrior four-and-a-half-inch 
plates were no longer impenetrable. Thicker plates were 
made for the already burdened hull, until the ponderous 
armor weighed it down as the coats of mail weighed down 
the knights of the Middle Ages. The full broadsides, ex- 
tending high out of water, were still presented as targets to 
the enemy. Their vulnerability with improved ordnance 
was relatively even greater than before. These defects were 
in some degree redeemed by the adoption of the ram for 
running down the enemy's ship, — a measure so eloquently 
urged upon the government by Colonel Ellet years before 
the war, and so signally illustrated by the Merrimack in 
Hampton Boads and the fleet under Admiral Davis before 
Memphis. 

2 



10 ADDKESS. 



THE MONITOR SYSTEM. 

This was the condition of the problem of armor 
ordnance in 1861. At that time our navy, with the ex- 
ception of a few effective ships of the hne, frigates, and 
sloops of war, had to be created, — a condition of things 
scarcely conceivable now that our iron-clads may fairly chal- 
lenge the assault of the world. The outbreak of the Rebel- 
lion presented an emergency which called into activity the 
resources of our people. The Navy Department gave an 
attentive ear to the projects devised by men of inventive 
talent, and in no case with more fortunate results than in the 
first turreted vessel submitted by Captain Ericsson. If it 
was to the honor of the commission who advised the con- 
struction of so novel a ship of war, and the department 
which acted with such promptitude upon their counsel, it 
was no less to the credit of the projector and constructor, 
that, within ninety days from the date of the contract, the 
Monitor was launched, and two months later had achieved — 
to the glory of Worden, his officers, and crew — its life-work 
in Hampton Roads. The plans of the vessel had been suited 
to the facilities of existing work shops, and to the exigency 
that made the saving of time a possible condition of national 
existence. 

Before the astonishment with which we viewed the naval 
conflict with the Merrimack had subsided, public attention 
was called to the claim that one of the distinguishing features 
of the Monitor^ the revolving turret, was an English in- 
vention. Appeal was made to the publications of Captain 
Coles, in " Blackwood " and in the " Mechanics' Magazine," 
bearing date of 1860, in which it was pointed out that the 
breech-loading guns of a ship of war might be served on 
turn-tables, moved by hand, and covered with dome-shaped 
shields. The conception of Captain Coles, as illustrated 
under his own signature, exhibited a double row of cupolas 
on the otherwise flush deck of an old-fashioned sloop of war. 

Tlie Lords of the Admiralty gave to the plans of Captain 



ADDRESS. 11 

Coles the same distinguished consideration that had been 
vouchsafed to the earher proposition of Captain Ericsson in 
regard to screw war-steamers. It was only after the success 
of the Monitor that Captain Coles obtained the hearing to 
which his high order of ability entitled him. 

Of the relative merits of the system, appropriately desig- 
nated by John Scott Russell, in his great work on naval 
architecture just published in London, as the " American 
iron-clad navy,'' the projector and builder of the G-reat 
Eastern says : — 

" It is a creation altogether original, peculiarly American, ad- 
mirably adapted to the special purpose which gave it birth. Like 
most American inventions, use has been allowed to dictate terms 
of construction ; and purpose, not prejudice, has been allowed to 
rule invention. 

" The ruling conditions of construction for the inventors of the 
American fleet were these : the vessels must be perfectly shot- 
proof; they must fight in shallow water; they must be able to 
endure a heavy sea, and pass through it, if not fight in it. 

"The American iron-clad navy is a child of these conditions. 
Minimum draught of water means minimum extent of surface pro- 
tected by armor. Perfect protection means thickness to resist the 
heaviest shot, and protection for the length of the whole ship ; it 
also means perfect protection to guns and gunners. Had they 
added what our legislators exact, that the ports shall lie in the 
ship's side, nine feet above the water, the problem might at once 
have become impossible and absurd; but they wanted the work 
done as it could be done, and allowed the conditions of success to 
rule the method of construction. 

"The conditions of success in the given circumstances were 
these : that you should not require the sides of the ship to rise 
much above the water's edge ; that you should be content with as 
many guns as the ship could carry and no more. 

" To do the work, therefore, the full thickness of armor required 
to keep out the enemies' shot was taken, but the ship was made to 
rise a few inches above water and no more ; and so a narrow strip 
of thick armor, all along the upper edge of the ship's side, gave her 
complete protection. Thus the least quantity of thickest armor 
did most work in protecting the ship, engines, boilers, and maga- 



12 ADDRESS. 

zines. Next, to protect the guns, a small circular fortress, shield, 
or tower, encircled a couple of guns ; and if four guns were to be 
carried, two such turrets carried the armament and contained the 
gunners. Thus, again, weight of armor was spared to the utmost, 
and so both ship and armament were completely protected. 

" But the consequences of these conditions are such as we, at 
least for sea-going ships, would reluctantly accept. The low ship's 
side will, in a sea-way, allow the sea to sweep over the ship ; and 
the waves, not the sailors, will have possession of the deck. The 
American accepts the conditions, removes the sailors from the deck, 
allows the sea to have its way, and drives his vessel through — not 
over — the sea to her fighting destination by steam, abandoning 
sails. The American also cheerfully accepts the small round tur- 
rets as protection for guns and men, and pivots them on a central 
turn-table in the middle of his ship, raising his port high enough 
to be out of the water, and then figliting his gun through an aper- 
ture little larger than its muzzle. 

" By thus frankly accepting the conditions he could not control, 
the American did his work and built his fleet. It is beyond doubt 
that the American Monitor class, with two turrets in each ship 
and two guns in each turret, is a kind of vessel that can be made 
fast, shot-proof, and sea-proof." 

It is now admitted that no v^'^eather is too severe for a 
monitor that has a tight deck and tight deck-openings. The 
larger vessels, of the Dictator and Monadnoch types, have 
been reported, by such experienced officers as Admiral Por- 
ter, Commodore Rogers, and Chief-Engineer Ziegler, to be 
capable of performing any sea-service. " The easy-rolling 
and good-steering qualities of the Dictator are not surpassed 
by any iron-clad afloat." Chief-Engineer Ziegler says of the 
Monadnock, after six thousand miles of sea-service, — " All 
agree that she is a perfect, successful, sea-going monitor." 

Scott Russell says : — 

" It will be noticed that the arrangements of the turret are very 
different from Captain Coles's arrangements. The whole turret is 
on the upper deck, exposed to shot ; it is not carried on a revolving 
set of rollers, but is pivoted on the centre, which seems to carry 
most of its weight by means of an iron trussing, from which it is, 



ADDRESS. 13 

as it were, suspended ; and it slides on a smooth metal plate lying 
on the deck. The turret is worked by a small pair of donkey 
engines working on tooth-gear, and the ports are covered by hang- 
ing blocks. When we consider the extreme rapidity which attended 
the execution of the project, we must say that the original Monitor 
was a remarkable success, and that she was a type of an entirely 
new class of war-ship. 

" It is curious and instructive to observe how differently the sys- 
tem has been developed in America and in England ; in the one 
case the sudden abandonment of all the conventionalities of a ship, 
and in the other the studious retention of old forms and ways, 
admitting the innovation with the greatest possible amount ol 
reluctance and seeming aversion." 

Any question of originality in point of time between Cap- 
tain Ericsson and Captain Coles is effectually set at rest by a 
letter and illustrative diagram, bearing date 1854, addressed 
by Captain Ericsson to the Emperor Napoleon, of which I 
hold in my hand a printed copy. It will be seen that all 
that is characteristic in Captain Coles's invention, to wit : the 
revolving turn-table and its cupola shield, were anticipated 
by some six years. 

It is not too much to say that with the Monitor a second 
revolution takes date in naval architecture within a period 
of twenty-five years. In this vessel, and more especially 
in those of the Dictator and Monadnoch classes, besides 
a hull containing all the vital parts of the vessel below 
the water-line, alike invisible to an enemy and invulnera- 
ble, we have a revolving turret, capable — like the narrow 
edge of the low deck — of indefinite increase of armor, and 
of carrying and serving amidships the most powerful ord- 
nance that can be devised ; a wheel-house within the turret 
and sharing its protection ; a ram of powerful construction, 
in which the deck acts as a wedge to penetrate and bear 
down an adversary; armor- plate as effectually protecting the 
stern as the bow and sides ; an impregnable chimney and 
artificial draught ; an even motion that permits the service 



14 ADDRESS. 

of the guns almost regardless of winds and waves ; a system 
of ventilation which sweeps the atmosphere of the whole 
habitable vessel under the grate-bars ; and a system of bunk- 
ers, which, when cleared of coal, may be filled with water to 
lower the deck and put the vessel in fighting trim, or emptied 
to make her light and high for speed. 

The system, in a word, provides for the safe and suc- 
cessful working of guns however large, and presents a com- 
bination of advantages, both for defence and aggression, to 
be sought for in vain in any contrivance based on the form 
of the old line-of-battle ship. 

THE CALORIC ENGINE. 

Let us turn now to the caloric engine. 

The idea of employing air in the propulsion of machinery 
is of early date. Papin, of Marburg, to whom we owe, 
among other inventions, the digester, the vacuum by steam, 
and the safety-valve, conceived the notion of compressing 
air by water power or other agency, and transmitting it 
through tubes to distant points, to be applied, to operate 
machinery. This proposition was followed, after a long in- 
terval, by that of heating the compressed air on its transit, 
as proposed by Medhurst toward the close of the last century. 
Since then, the patents taken out for various forms of air- 
engines in the Old World and the New number several 
hundreds. They class themselves under three principal 
heads : — 

1st. Such as use the same volume of air over and over 
again, alternately heating and cooling it, wholly or par- 
tially ; of which there are various forms, including — beside 
some of Ericsson's — Stirling's, Hazeltine's, Parkinson & 
Crossley's, McDonough's, and others. 

2d. Such as use the volatile products of combustion with 
the air, discharging at each stroke ; like Ericsson's flame- 
engine, Bennett's, Baxter's, Sir George C.ayley's, Gordon's, 
Drake's, Whipple's, Shaw's, and Roper's. 

3d. Such as take in air at ordinary atmospheric pressure, 



ADDKESS. 15 

heat it by contact with heated metal, and discharge it at each 
stroke ; like Ericsson's, Reach's, and Wilcox's. 

It would be an endless, and for the purposes of this occasion 
a needless task to attempt to present, if justice could be 
done, the claims of all these exhibitions of thought, labor, 
and triumph over great mechanical difficulties. It is our 
duty only to point out the relative significance of the part in 
them performed by the recipient of the Rumford Premium. 

Ericsson's first air-engine, called by the inventor the flame- 
engine^ belonged to the second class ; in which the products 
of combustion pass through the working parts of the engine. 
His second engine, in point of time, was of the third class. 

In 1826, a Scotch clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Robert Stir- 
ling, and John Ericsson, applied to the British Government 
for patents for motive power actuated by heat and atmos- 
pheric air. 

Stirling's engine was founded on the old idea of producing 
an alternating expansive force by moving a solid body back 
and forward within a closed vessel containing atmospheric 
air, heated at one end and cooled at the other. Ericsson's 
was founded on the idea of taking in a fresh supply of air at 
each stroke, heating and discharging it into the atmosphere. 
Robert Stirling, associating himself with his brother James, 
steadfastly pursued his chosen line of invention till about 
1840, when the Dundee air-engine was produced. It is not 
known that this engine, which for several years gave very 
good satisfaction, has ever been repeated. The principal 
difficulties consisted in finding material which would sustain 
the intense heat of the fire, and in the necessity of supplying 
a large amount of water for cooling purposes. 

Ericsson brought into practical operation, in 1827, the 
first double-cylinder engine actuated by heated air discharged 
at each stroke into the atmosphere. One cylinder and its 
piston served to supply the air. With the descent of the 
piston, air was taken in through valves above, while that 
below was driven over the heater into the working cylinder. 
With the rise of the piston in the supply cylinder, the air 



16 ADDRESS. 

from above was transferred through a lateral passage to the 
bottom of the cylinder, filling the space as the piston rose. 
The air driven into the working cylinder, acquiring expansive 
force by the heat received in its transfer, operated the piston 
in the open working cylinder, communicating motion to the 
machinery. 

THE REGENERATOR. 

By using a common passage, containing a number of 
straight pieces of metal, alternately for the heated air escap- 
ing from the working cylinder, and for the transfer of the 
cold air from above to below the piston, in the supply cylinder, 
in which case the piston moves in equiltbrio, Captain Eric- 
sson, in 1837, introduced the regenerator, already applied 
by him to the engine of the first class in 1833, and in re- 
gard to which there has been so much and such ill-informed 
discussion. Could the parties to the opposing views have 
come to a common stand-point, they would have discovered 
themselves reenacting the combat of the gold and silver 
shield. The use of the heat of the heated air after the air 
has performed its work in the working cylinder, by warming 
closely arranged sheets of metal or coarse wire netting and 
then absorbing this heat from the metal by the air in its pas- 
sage, in constant volume, from one side to the other of the 
piston in the supply cylinder, is no more mysterious than the 
economy of the use of water condensed from waste steam 
and returned at a temperature below 212° to the boiler. 
There is this difference, however, that it is possible to heat 
the air passing through a regenerator to a temperature much 
above 212°. What the inventor claims to be a regenerator, 
and Franchot called a calefactor, the disputant would perhaps 
call an economizer. 

DIFFICULTIES AND REWARDS OF INVENTORS. 
The progress of discovery and invention in the case of the 
caloric engine, with its attendant constant collision with 
difficulties, anticipated and unforeseen, with its unflinching 



ADDRESS, 17 

struggle continued through evil and through good report for 
thirty-five years, and the calm conviction of ultimate success 
which animated it, can never be fully known or appreciated. 
It required, moreover, the perennial inspiration of capital, 
proverbially wanting in faith, and yet never appealed to in 
vain by Captain Ericsson in this city of merchants, " some 
among whom, like those of ancient Tyre, are princes." 

While the history of the caloric engine illustrates the gran- 
deur of the cooperation which its inventor has enjoyed, it 
illustrates also the conditions of success in invention which 
even genius must recognize. The development of a con- 
ception requiring mechanical devices, serial processes, trials, 
modifications, and a period of probation, involves capital. 
The duty of capital is self-increase. It demands, as a pre- 
requisite to investment, satisfaction in regard to prospective 
profit, or, if there be chances of loss, that they be balanced 
by chances of corresponding or greater gain. How are these 
chances of gain to be secured to capital ? By precluding 
competition for a limited time, that the losses incidental to 
development may be reimbursed. And this is done through 
the protection afforded by the patent laws. Without this 
protection few of the great achievements of the age would 
have made their mark. The steam-engine, the locomotive, 
the photograph, the telegraph, the wood-screw, the thresh - 
ing-machine, the reaping-machine, the sewing-machine, the 
Hoe printing-press, the improvements in arms, and in domes- 
tic economy, warming, and illumination, the analine colors, 
vulcanized rubber, the propeller, the caloric engine, and the 
monitor, have become what they are, and rendered their 
services to civihzation chiefly through the method of co- 
operation between the inventor and the capitalist which the 
patent laws have provided. 

It has sometimes occurred that men of science — unlike 
Liebig, Gay-Lussac, and Hoffman, Brewster and Wheat- 
stone, Watt, Fairburn, and Ericsson — have declined to avail 
themselves of this provision for rendering their discoveries 
or inventions useful to their fellow-men. Where, in such 
3 



18 ADDRESS. 

cases, there lias been genuine invention, promising increased 
comfort and culture to man, it has usually happened that the 
labor and thought were bestowed in vain ; and for the obvious 
reason, that, as all may engage in the supply of the new 
product, the capital required for unavoidable expenditures at 
the outset cannot have its needed protection. The author 
and publisher are aware of this natural law. The copyright 
is the recognition of their necessities. Where, on the other 
hand, the invention, as may be assumed in the great majority 
of cases, has advanced only to the stage of difficulty, where 
the steadfastness of the experimenter and the resources of 
varied creative power are called into action, as the essentials 
to success, the giving over of what has been done to the 
public is not to be wondered at ; nor should it be a matter of 
surprise, that, to the authors of the latter class of inventions, 
especially, the patent laws seem to have, been devised for 
another class of minds than their own. 

INVENTION AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 

It sometimes happens, after the crown of success has been 
attained by the faithful experimentalist, that the germ of the 
hypothesis upon which he bestowed his thought and labor is 
claimed to have been entertained, at an earlier period, by some 
one else. 

The claim alleged is for the specific scientific discovery 
which is said to underlie the invention. Now, scientific dis- 
coveries are of various classes and degrees of merit. There are 
simple facts, which, like material gems, reward an explorer in 
a fruitful field, and demand little effort beyond the exercise of 
attention and a capacity to collect and record. There are 
others in which the laws of physical force and chemical com- 
position are determined by systematic experiment. There 
are still others in which abstract relations are brought to 
light, as in mathematics ; and others in which the properties 
conferred upon matter by organic life are the subjects of 
research, as in physiology. Achievements in these several 
fields have a certain value as an evidence of culture and a 



ADDRESS. 19 

title to social consideration. There is another class in which 
success is sometimes rewarded by pecuniary as well as social 
distinction. It is the class in which the object of discovery 
is a device by which the forces of nature or the qualities of 
matter may be made to render new service to civilization. 

In this class, discovery has usually, for its first step, the 
perception or appreciation of a want. Its next step is spec- 
ulation as to the devices by which the want may be met. 
Then there is the production of a crude contrivance, by 
which to test the soundness of the speculation. Then come 
modifications and new trials, and ultimately what seems suc- 
cess. Then comes expansion of the process, approaching a 
working scale. Trial on the larger plan reveals fresh im- 
perfections ; new relations appear, and new expedients have 
to be resorted to. The devices which, at the commencement, 
were distinguished on account of their complexity, are replaced 
by others of marked simplicity. Again success seems to be 
attained. Now comes the grand economy and organization 
of the enterprise for rendering the discovery available and 
useful. 

The rank of the scientific discovery, or series of discover- 
ies, which make up such an invention, is high in proportion 
as the intrinsic difficulties to be overcome have been great, and 
as the investigation and solution of the problem presented 
have been exhaustive, and low in proportion as the difficulties 
were inconsiderable, and as the investigation has been super- 
ficial and the solution defective. 

It rarely happens that all the stages of an important and 
useful discovery of this class are presided over by one mind. 
More frequently the earlier and later stages fall into different 
hands. In this event the rewards are divided. The nearer 
one is to the conclusion of the series, the larger uniformly is 
his measure of material return. Where all have been the 
offspring of one mind, the honors and pecuniary emoluments 
enter alike into the reward. Where the naked speculation 
or suggestion only can be claimed, or where a crude device 
merely had been proposed and success predicted, the author 



20 ADDRESS. 

will be assigned a place in the world's esteem, distinguished 
in some degree in proportion to the clearness and detail of his 
plans and predictions. If it be not as high as the man of 
suggestion sometimes deems his due, it is because the ap- 
plause of mankind seems to be reserved for its heroes, — the 
men who have not only encountered difficulty, but made its 
conquest, — rather than for its men of speculation, whose 
influence on the well-being of the race is more transient, or, 
if lasting, less direct. 

The common sense of the world has made a uniform, and, 
we must believe, a just discrimination, in its award of merit 
to him who, patiently following the lead of a conception, 
has brought to successful issue and recognition new agencies 
for advancing civilization, rather than to him who, equally 
with the former, had the same happy conception, and had it 
even at an earlier date, but neglected the duties nature pre- 
scribes as the condition of fruition. 

" The step from the first more or less vague conception of a new 
truth to its conclusive demonstration is a matter of far more impor- 
tance and difficulty than the happy and sometimes, to all appear- 
ances, intuitive guesses which have invariably preceded eveiy great 
discovery. Newton formed a right estimate of his own claims, when 
he ascribed his success to the patient and laborious pertinacity with 
which he kept fast hold of an idea, until, by long thinking and 
varied experiment, he has proved either its truth or its false- 
hood." — Quarterly Review : Newton as a Scientijic Discoverer. 

HISTORY OF THE CALORIC ENGINE OF 1858. 

Let US trace the steps by which the caloric engine of 1868 
was evolved. 

First, in 1827, we had the two-cylinder engine, with a 
piston in each cylinder. 

In 1837 the fly-wheel above and regenerator were added 
to the two-cylinder engine. With some modification of de- 
tails, this engine was reproduced by Wilcox in 1859-60. 

In 1839, in connection with the regenerator, came two 
pistons operating in one cylinder, one supply and the other 



ADDRESS. 21 

working, and with them a device for compressing the air 
at the instant of its passage from the supply cylinder to be 
heated. The feature of two pistons in one cylinder reap- 
peared, with the regenerator in the head of the working 
piston, in Reach's engine, the plan of which was published 
in 1854, though it is not known to have been carried out to 
a working model. 

Then came a series of experimental engines, resulting, in 
1851, in the differential engine for the caloric ship, — a 
vessel which, at the outset, yielded a speed of seven knots, 
but was ultimately abandoned, not from any inherent defect 
of principle, but because the wants of commerce required 
faster ships. 

In 1855 we had the supply and working piston in one 
cylinder, with the regenerator and the compression of air, in 
which the supply piston worked in equilihrio at the time when 
the working piston was nearly stationary. 

In 1856 was added the quickened motion at the conclusion 
of the inward stroke of the supply piston. 

In 1858 came the device of the alternating blast of cold 
air over the lubricated surface of the cylinder, by which the 
temperature was kept below that at which oil suffers injury. 
The difficulty of preventing the oil from burning had been 
pronounced by eminent authority in England to be insur- 
mountable, because of the high temperature indispensable to 
the air-engine, — debarring, therefore, forever, success to the 
caloric engine. To this device were united, within one cylin- 
der, the supply and working pistons, the telescopic tube, the 
fire-pot, and the regenerator. To render these effective were 
devised the combination of the fly-wheel, rock-shaft, crank, 
and lever movements, and the system of connecting rods, by 
which the air of the supply cylinder is compressed at the 
instant when the working cylinder is nearly at rest, by which 
the working piston is held in equilihrio during the transfer of 
the air to the heater through the regenei-ator, and by which 
the necessary direct, reversed, uniform, accelerated, and re- 
tarded motions required for operating the pistons and valves 



22 ADDRESS. 

are produced and connected with each other. It is difficult 
to conceive of a higher theoretical and mechanical triumph. 

I do not dwell on the series of air-engines constructed by 
Captain Ericsson to operate by alternately heating and cool- 
ing a confined body of compressed air, of which the first was 
built in 1833, and one of the most recent was nearly com- 
pleted for the Primero at the outbreak of the Rebellion. It 
is enough to say, that, in comparing the earlier with the later 
engines, there is a marked development of the capabilities of 
the principle, and corresponding progress in invention. 

It has been impossible to go into detail with each of Cap- 
tain Ericsson's air-engines, of which there have been pro- 
duced above thirty, distributed through more than this num- 
ber of years, differing in essential particulars of invention, 
or designed to test some question to be answered only by 
experiment, — as it would be to review the discussions of the 
caloric engine, in which Ericsson, Rankine, Joule, Napier, 
Regnault, Barnard, Norton, and a crowd of other writers, 
French, German, English, and American, have taken part. 
No one who comprehends the action of Stirling's earlier 
engine, or of Ericsson's of 1833 or 1837, — which, with the 
regenerator attached, would do an amount of duty to which 
it was titterly inadequate with the regenerator detached, — 
or of the action of the caloric engine of 1858, or of Wil- 
cox's, — which with the escape and supply ports closed, and 
the air of the working cylinder returned alternately to and 
received from the supply cylinder, will run for a long time 
after the fire has been withdrawn, — can now doubt, that, 
upon the main point, the function of the regenerator, the 
claims of Ericsson have been sustained. 

I cannot omit to allude to the experimental researches of 
Captain Ericsson to determine the relations of elasticity to 
temperature in suddenly compressed air, as compared with 
air so slowly compressed as to have the heat removed as 
rapidly as produced. They are important as having been 



ADDRESS. 23 

conducted on a scale so large as to escape the errors of pre- 
vious experimenters, and being therefore more trustworthy 
as a guide to engineers. It is to be hoped that the details of 
these researches, together with all the others Captain Eric- 
sson has made, connected with heated air, steam, and naval 
architecture and armament, will at no distant day see the 
light, that their legitimate influence may be felt upon the 
spirit of invention and the progress of the mechanic arts. 

Captain Ericsson : At the time the vote of the Ameri- 
can Academy of Arts and Sciences conferring upon you the 
Rumford Premium was passed, I had the honor to be Chair- 
man of the Rumford Committee, and, you will remember, 
signified my wish to relieve myself of the trust imposed upon 
me ; but as this formal act and the simple ceremony appro- 
priate to it have been postponed in consequence of the press- 
ure of the war, in which you, sir, have borne so conspicuous 
a part, the custody of the vote and medal has been continued 
with me to the present time. 

I have the honor now to place in your hands a certified 
copy of the vote passed by the Academy at its annual meet- 
ing, June 10, 1862. It is as follows : — 

" Voted, That the Rumford Premium be awarded to John Eric- 
sson, for his improvements in the management of heat, particularly 
as shown in his caloric engine of 1858." 

In now handing to you the gold and silver medals which 
have been prepared in accordance with the statutes of the 
Academy, I beg to congratulate you upon the honors you 
have won through a life of research and experiment, devoted 
to the promotion of the prosperity and well-being of man- 
kind, in the field contemplated by the illustrious founder of 
the Rumford Premium. 



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